Claws, we weep for thee...

[SwitchFade]

At some point, in the ongoing balancing of claws and other general irrelevancies, we meandered squarely into the realm of mediocrity for the set.

 

Claws was, during animation tuning and damage/recharge balancing, a set on test that could soundly drub a rikti pylon about the head and ears. As comically absurd as this was, it highlights a point not of power or balance, but of mundanity.

 

The current animations are horktastic. They are inane in sum, even though several are acceptable. Thus, I propose...

 

If they are available, and animation timing allowing, please make available the old claw animations as an alternate. I do think that the set is capably powerful and balanced enough for now, it just looks horrendous, and not in a cheeky way.

 

As always, this is obviously not a high priority and may be relegated to Canon fodder, should the time/return not be in balance.

 

I thank you.

 

*Bows*

[Trickshooter]

Not sure it's possible. Claws as a set breaks all the rules in PvE and is balanced specifically around it's animation times. Changing animations around again could possibly break what is already a good set.

[Without_Pause]

Huh. Honestly haven't noticed on my Claws/wp. The only issue I have seen is Kick requiring redraw, which honestly there is no reason for.

[Jaguaratron]

Huh. Honestly haven't noticed on my Claws/wp. The only issue I have seen is Kick requiring redraw, which honestly there is no reason for.

 

Yeah, that sucks, the attacks in the fighting pool are worthless to weapon sets due to redraw and yes, you can go "no redraw" but thats pretty damn buggy still.

[Trickshooter]

Huh. Honestly haven't noticed on my Claws/wp. The only issue I have seen is Kick requiring redraw, which honestly there is no reason for.

 

It's kind of a limitation of the system. The game doesn't really understand that your Claws are on your hands and that Kick is using your feet so it wouldn't make sense to have to put them away. It just knows that you're using a power from a different set than the power you used before, and this one has no weapon while the previous one did. The way to get around this was to create an entirely new animation for each power you wanted to fix, that included a weapon even if it wasn't used, but one would need to be made for every possible weapon. It's a lot of work and they only did it for a few powers (namely Brawl). I can't remember how they got around it for Shield Defense, though. They honestly might have gone ahead and made animations for every possible power that could be taken with Shield.

 

The way the SCoRE folks got around it with the NoRedraw options was to just remove the draw animation that happens before you bring your weapon back out. This was something I'm pretty sure the original devs could have done, but they left in for "realism." It's not a perfect solution, since your weapon still gets put away, but you at least don't have to go back through the redraw animation.

[SwitchFade]

Not sure it's possible. Claws as a set breaks all the rules in PvE and is balanced specifically around it's animation times. Changing animations around again could possibly break what is already a good set.

 

The multi swipe animation was amazing though... *Cries*

[Without_Pause]

Huh. Honestly haven't noticed on my Claws/wp. The only issue I have seen is Kick requiring redraw, which honestly there is no reason for.

 

Yeah, that sucks, the attacks in the fighting pool are worthless to weapon sets due to redraw and yes, you can go "no redraw" but thats pretty damn buggy still.

 

Pretty sure Brawl does a similar attack with no redraw if you already have Claws drawn. Maybe I need to look into seeing about changing over to no redraw on Kick. This just feels like a specific issue for brutes would use it as an attack to build fury with and not using Brawl. Not that I plan on it being part of a final attack chain, just, yeah.

[subbacultchas]

Huh. Honestly haven't noticed on my Claws/wp. The only issue I have seen is Kick requiring redraw, which honestly there is no reason for.

 

Yeah, that sucks, the attacks in the fighting pool are worthless to weapon sets due to redraw and yes, you can go "no redraw" but thats pretty damn buggy still.

Conversely, the same could be said for Black Scorpion's epic pool with the damned Mace, unless that's been changed since live. I like the epic a lot, but I rarely take more than the shield because it used to have huge redraw issues (and I am assuming still does).

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Pretty sure Brawl does a similar attack with no redraw if you already have Claws drawn. Maybe I need to look into seeing about changing over to no redraw on Kick. This just feels like a specific issue for brutes would use it as an attack to build fury with and not using Brawl. Not that I plan on it being part of a final attack chain, just, yeah.

Brawl is a special case. Basically the devs did separate animations for every combat stance and then hard coded brawl to select an animation based on your current stance. Basically you end up needing a ton of extra animations for each combat stance plus body type and flying.

 

Back in the day Back Alley Brawler actually commented on this, fortunately I saved a link to his post on my wiki page

http://web.archive.org/web/20120904045419/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showpost.php?p=2441550&postcount=26

FYI, we have seven combat modes:

 

    Combat - unarmed combat mode, used by most powers

    Weapon - weapon in right hand. Broadsword, Mace, Axe, Arachnos Mace, etc.

    Dual Wield - Dual Blades, Dual Pistols

    *Lefthand - used by lefthand weapons. Archery and Katana

    *Claws - used by...hang on a sec...oh right, Claws.

    Shield - Shield and Shield Weapon combat mode

    Gun - two handed rifles. Assault Rifle and Robotics Mastermind

 

*Lefthand and Claws are a subset of Dual Wield. They generally share animations with Dual combat mode.

 

So really looking at 12-16 animations per power, counting the varients for Male, Female, and Huge for Gun combat mode and doubling everything for Flight. To put that in perspective, that's basically a powerset. That's also not counting the massive bloat that would happen to our sequencers from having 5-7 versions of every power animation.

 

I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes.

[Leogunner]

Huh. Honestly haven't noticed on my Claws/wp. The only issue I have seen is Kick requiring redraw, which honestly there is no reason for.

 

Yeah, that sucks, the attacks in the fighting pool are worthless to weapon sets due to redraw and yes, you can go "no redraw" but thats pretty damn buggy still.

 

Pretty sure Brawl does a similar attack with no redraw if you already have Claws drawn. Maybe I need to look into seeing about changing over to no redraw on Kick. This just feels like a specific issue for brutes would use it as an attack to build fury with and not using Brawl. Not that I plan on it being part of a final attack chain, just, yeah.

 

I recall the devs saying that Brawl was ironically the most complex attack in the game.

[Mr. Vee]

<3 claws. i can't imagine why you'd need to use kick with it when focus is such a fast recharging kd and with the kb to kd IO shockwave is great too. I actually use claws/fire as my farmer as I've never cared for spines. Might not be officially as fast but it's super fast and great for regular content too. I didn't start til issue 12 so i don't even remember other animations.

[Shinobu]

 

My farmer is claws/fire and it is plenty fast, trust me.  ^_^

 

 

[Without_Pause]

<3 claws. i can't imagine why you'd need to use kick with it when focus is such a fast recharging kd and with the kb to kd IO shockwave is great too.

 

Because Claws doesn't have a seemless attack chain while leveling. Brutes use Brawl to help build fury. Kick would easily fill that need until later on.

[Trickshooter]

<3 claws. i can't imagine why you'd need to use kick with it when focus is such a fast recharging kd and with the kb to kd IO shockwave is great too.

 

Because Claws doesn't have a seemless attack chain while leveling. Brutes use Brawl to help build fury. Kick would easily fill that need until later on.

 

I thought to myself "What do you mean? It all recharges so fast!" but TIL that Brutes version of Claws has slower recharges but higher base damage than the Scrapper version.

[SwitchFade]

Again, I noted that the balance of the set is fine, but that several animations look horrendous. I asked, of possible, that the old animations be made available as alternatives. An example of terrible is the attack that looks like a ridiculous one-two punch, just with long stabby blades on your hands. Another terrible animation is a low gut-jab-punch style animation. Ack.

 

The old animations were a frenzied multi-swipe, and another swipe.

 

I didn't say the set is slow, or underperforming. It's solid.

 

And looks stupid.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Actually part of the animation changes were in large part due tomany players not liking the frnezied looking attacks, and most of us at the time of the change I recall being very happy with more of apunch dagger approach to using them

 

As forbrutes, brutes dont need any damn help being more kill crazy. Not every power set is suppose to feel optimal at every lvl range. Some are supposed to only feel good at high lvl, some thrive at low to mid level and are just decent at high end.

 

Hell not every character needs to push for max lvl and incarnate. many of my characters I intentionally park at certain levels depicting what I consider the concepts proper power lvl. In other words batman and wolverine are not cosmic class concepts,

 

Id suggest savage melee anyways.

[SwitchFade]

Actually part of the animation changes were in large part due tomany players not liking the frnezied looking attacks, and most of us at the time of the change I recall being very happy with more of apunch dagger approach to using them

 

As forbrutes, brutes dont need any damn help being more kill crazy. Not every power set is suppose to feel optimal at every lvl range. Some are supposed to only feel good at high lvl, some thrive at low to mid level and are just decent at high end.

 

Hell not every character needs to push for max lvl and incarnate. many of my characters I intentionally park at certain levels depicting what I consider the concepts proper power lvl. In other words batman and wolverine are not cosmic class concepts,

 

Id suggest savage melee anyways.

 

Again... This is why I merely asked that they be an alternate animation available.... And mentioned that the balance is good for the power... And said that it may not be worth it based on how difficult it is to do.